1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 841 Continue Northward
Hai Han did not have too many scruples about the continuous operations of the coalition forces in the Zhejiang waters, but Xu Yuzhuo and the Ming army led by him were more sensitive. Please come to the door.The coalition forces have been delayed here for more than three days, and their whereabouts must have been exposed inevitably, but now the people and pirates who have been in contact with the coalition forces are temporarily under control, and the government and people on the mainland probably haven't figured it out yet. What is the origin of this sudden armed force, but if they continue to stay, this identity may not be concealed for long.

Originally, the coalition forces planned to leave Wenzhou Bay and go northward the next day, but the two ships of the Ming army that rushed to Yandang Town, Yueqing did not return to the staging area in Wenzhou Bay until the next afternoon, which was a full two or three hours later than expected. .According to the account of the leading officer, this errand did not go as smoothly as expected.

After the two boatmen arrived at Yandang Town last night, they went ashore in the dark to the old lair of the Yueqing Boat Gang.For the 10 taels of silver, this group of pirates almost went out with all their strength. There were only a few old, weak, sick and disabled left behind. The wolf-like Ming army cleared them up without much effort.But what they didn't expect was that all the silver in the secret location of the Yueqing Ship Gang was cast into silver winter melons, each weighing hundreds of catties, and the round and smooth shape made it extremely inconvenient to carry.

This method of storing silver was spread from the north. In order to prevent their silver from being stolen, the rich men cast it into a melon shape and buried it in the cellar. Taken away.There are few such ways of storing silver here in Fujian, and the officers who were sent to retrieve the treasure were also dumbfounded when they saw it. In the middle of the night, they couldn't find any tools such as ropes and wooden sticks, and they couldn't even find a flatbed cart. Lifting his shoulders and relying on manpower to send it to the boat.

But the little ingenuity of the three leaders of the Yueqing Ship Gang was probably used on the matter of storing silver. This bank is two miles away from the shore, and it is located on a hillside, which greatly increases Reduced the difficulty of carrying silver.The only good thing is that the place where the silver is buried is not in Yandang Town, otherwise this group of people will definitely attract the attention of the outside world if they are so tossing around in the middle of the night.Even so, the dozens of people who went to carry out the task were exhausted, digging and moving, and it was not until dawn that all the silver melons in the secret bank were loaded onto the boat.

This night's hard work was not in vain. A total of 32 silver winter melons were brought back, with a total value of nearly 20 taels of silver.According to the original agreement between the two parties, Xu Yuzhuo wanted to hand over all the money to Haihan as a fund and reward for this temporary operation.

This operation was not in the original plan of the coalition forces, and the military expenditure was naturally out of plan.Although there is a huge difference in strength between the two sides, in order to make a quick decision and ensure that no fish slipped through the net, the coalition forces invested almost all of their combat personnel and ships in the final battle. Not too small.In addition to the several days of delay of the entire coalition fleet here, the expenses of Haihan's more than 2000 people, and the combat rewards after the war, it is not a small sum.

However, Qian Tiandun thinks that it is not very good to accept all the orders like this. After all, the Ming army also sent troops and efforts in this process. If the soup is not reserved for others, when the two sides want to cooperate on the battlefield later, the Ming army may not continue to do their best to provide support.After the two sides were polite to each other, Haihan took [-]% and the Ming army got [-]%. The commanders of both armies issued commendation orders to their troops, and the morale of the coalition forces was once again boosted.

After night fell that night, the coalition fleet set off from Wenzhou Bay one after another and continued northward.The few ships in charge of logistics carried the pirate prisoners captured in the past few days, as well as some fishermen who were docked on the islands by the coalition fleet during the operation, and returned south to Fujian.The reason why even the fishermen on the island were also taken away was mainly because they were worried that the news would be leaked too early, especially since the identity of the Fujian Navy is relatively sensitive, so they should cover it up as long as they can.

From Wenzhou to the north, it entered the boundary of Taizhou.Taizhou borders the East China Sea in the east, Wenzhou in the south, Shaoxing and Ningbo in the north, and Jinhua and Chuzhou in the west.The terrain of Taizhou is dominated by mountains, with Yandang Mountain as a barrier in the south. There are Dalei Mountain, Tiantai Mountain and other peaks in the territory. Mishailang, the main peak of Tiantai Mountain, the highest peak in eastern Zhejiang, is located in Taizhou.The Yueqing Bay, where the Yueqing Ship Gang is hiding, belongs to Wenzhou on the west side of the mainland, and the Chumen Peninsula and Yuhuan Island in the east are under the rule of Taizhou.

Taizhou has a long history. It had an official government office as early as the pre-Qin period, but it was not until Tang Wude five years that Taizhou was named after the Tiantai Mountain in its territory, and it has been used until now.

The coastline of Taizhou is more than a thousand miles long. There are 12 island groups and nearly 700 large and small islands in the offshore. The sea situation is also very complicated.Although there is no pirate gang of the size of the Yueqing Ship Gang, there are quite a few small pirate gangs with two or three ships like the Song brothers were in before.

The combat ships and logistics ships of the coalition fleet, together with the merchant fleet used as bait, are nearly a hundred ships. If such a large mixed fleet moves together, it is difficult not to attract the attention of the officials in the offshore area.Therefore, under Shi Diwen's suggestion, the United Fleet was dismantled into several parts, and the merchant fleet traveled along the coastal route. A few nautical miles east of it were small and medium-sized warships, and the "Enterprise" with the largest tonnage The accompanying frigate and logistics supply ship are kept on a route about [-] to [-] nautical miles away from the coast, so as to minimize the chance of being discovered, because the shape of this ship is indeed too obvious. It's hard to hide your identity.

During the operation of the coalition forces in Wenzhou, the "Enterprise" only showed up in the final battle. The rest of the time, it kept its whereabouts as concealed as possible, in order to prevent future opponents from expecting the existence of this big killer.Before arriving at the final destination of the Zhoushan Islands, the "Enterprise" will follow this principle and minimize its appearance in public.

The fleet was once again harassed by pirates when passing through Dachen Island. These two islands are very similar to the battlefield in Wenzhou the day before yesterday. They are also two islands facing each other, one north and one south. They are collectively called Dachen Island, also known as Dongzhen Mountain or Dongzheng Mountain.

Merchant ships traveling from Wenzhou and Taizhou to North Korea and Japan will pass through the waters near Dachen Island, and use Gaolitou Reef on the island as a navigation mark.In the middle of the last century, Dachen Island was also one of the battlefields where the navy of the Ming army fought against the Japanese.In the 34th year of Jiajing, the navy of the Ming army chased down the Japanese pirates here, and there were also alarm pier and stronghold built by the Ming army left behind at that time.But at this time, the coastal defenses were relaxed, and the navy of the Ming army was no longer comparable to the situation a hundred years ago, and no troops were stationed on these near-shore islands.The anti-Japanese outpost back then has now become a paradise for pirates.

The distance between Upper Dachen Island and Lower Dachen Island is only about two nautical miles. There are actually a group of pirates stationed on each of the two islands. They usually make a living by fishing, but when encountering a lone merchant ship at sea, they will immediately turn into pirates. .

The merchant ships used by the United Fleet as bait were all in groups of two, and the two ships at the forefront happened to meet the Dachen Island pirates who were going to sea.The first to discover the target was the people from Dachen Island. After confirming that there were two ships in the target, the pirates who felt that they were not strong enough sent a signal to ask the pirates on Dachen Island to come to help.

The crew on the bait boat had received special training before departure. When they saw several fishing boats coming straight towards them in the distance, they immediately adjusted their direction to test their intentions.After seeing that the opponent also immediately changed direction and tried to cut into their own advancing route, the two bait boats immediately turned decisively to the east and fled towards the East China Sea.

If the two ships had turned west and fled towards the mouth of the Jiaojiang River in Taizhou Bay, perhaps the pirates might not have chased them down, because there was a naval camp at the mouth of the Jiaojiang River. Although there were not many troops, the pirates did not want to provoke the authorities.However, since these two ships intend to run to the East China Sea, they have to chase them—there are no islands for docking or hiding within a few hundred nautical miles to the east of this place. It was a full four hundred nautical miles away, and the pirates did not believe that the two merchant ships could escape so far.The two groups of pirates and the four ships communicated with each other with simple signals, and immediately decided to continue chasing them.

Of course, things didn't go as the pirates expected. After chasing them for more than ten nautical miles, they suddenly discovered that there was another huge fleet on the sea in the direction where the two ships were fleeing.Although they couldn't figure out the origin of this fleet, they already smelled danger in the air.But it was too late to turn around and leave at this time. The pirates suddenly found that unidentified sailboats appeared from the north and south and attacked them.

The pirates turned around to flee, and took up their weapons in a frenzied manner to fight.Their weapons are not much better than those of the pirates in Wenzhou. They are still mainly cold weapons such as harpoons, spears, and waist knives.There are also bird guns and earth cannons, but with just four or five guns and one or two cannons, the combat effectiveness is simply negligible in front of the coalition fleet.

After the coalition warships approached, they did not try to persuade them to surrender, and directly fired a round of grape shells from the artillery to sweep across the deck, making ghosts on the pirate ship howl.The pirates never expected to bump into this kind of iron plate at the door of their own house, and they lost the ability to fight back almost at the same time as they fought.

After clearing the decks of the four pirate ships with crossfire, the warships slowly approached.In order to prevent survivors from jumping to the gang, the sailors on the ship stood in a row on the side of the ship and aimed their muskets at the deck of the pirate ship.

However, the pirates were so severely injured that they could no longer resist, and the people on the deck were either dead or injured, lying down.Those who escaped the catastrophe by chance all shrank in the cabin and shivered, not daring to show their heads at all.

The sailors spent half an hour cleaning up these ships, transferring all the survivors who had escaped the catastrophe to the coalition ships, and then piercing through all four seriously damaged pirate ships, allowing them to carry the corpses of the pirates. Sunk into the sea with a few seriously injured.It's not that the coalition forces are acting cruelly. Firstly, they want to try their best to keep their whereabouts secret. Second, these seriously injured people will take up the limited resources of the coalition fleet, so simply disposing of them is the most cost-effective way.

As for the living captives, after the interrogation, they will be handed over to the next batch of logistics ships returning to Fujian.Their future destination will probably be in northern Taiwan. Whether it is the Tamsui River Estuary or the gold mines near Jilonggang, there is still a large labor gap that needs to be filled.These prisoner-of-war laborers are most suitable to be used in gold mines that require fully closed management.Although the number of this group of prisoners of war is not large, Qian Tiandun believes that as the coalition fleet continues to go north, more and more pirate forces will be encountered.When the Zhoushan Islands are captured, at least thousands of prisoners of war laborers can be sent to Taiwan Island.

The two groups of pirates on Dachen Island disappeared into the sea almost silently, and it took a long time before they were noticed by the fishermen in the nearby area. It wasn't until ten days later that they learned about the changes that had taken place on Dachen Island.At that time, the coalition fleet had already arrived at the Zhoushan Islands and launched operations there. Officials with knowledge of the situation in various parts of Zhejiang began to link the mysterious disappearances of pirate gangs that had appeared in various states in recent days with this huge fleet that fell from the sky.

This small episode on Dachen Island only delayed the coalition fleet for less than half a day. After the final matters were dealt with, the fleet continued to march northward along the established route in three routes: left, middle and right.Originally, Qian Tiandun wanted to use several merchant ships to enter Taizhou from Jiaojiang, and go to Taizhou City to see the local security situation and business environment, but Xu Yuzhuo worried that there would be troubles, and urged him to continue on his way north.Qian Tiandun knew that he was afraid that the fact that there were Ming army naval personnel in the coalition fleet would be exposed prematurely, so he didn't insist anymore, and continued to march northward according to his wishes.

About ten nautical miles to the north from Dachen Island, you will arrive at the Dongji Islands, one of the landmarks on the boundary between Ningbo and Taizhou.The Dongji Archipelago, consisting of 57 large and small islands, belongs to the sea area of ​​Taizhou to the south, and is under the rule of Ningbo Prefecture to the north.

The first important place to enter the sea area of ​​​​Ningbo Prefecture is Changguowei, one of the four famous sea defense guards in the Ming Dynasty.Changguowei is located eighty miles southwest of Xiangshan County, 350 miles away from Ningbo Fufu City.During the Hongwu period, the Weisuo City was built on Dongmen Mountain in the south of the county seat of Changguo County. During the Yongle, Chenghua, and Jiajing years, it was repaired and expanded several times. There are thousands of troops in the garrison - of course, this is just data on paper.

(End of this chapter)